I’m not going to be with my Mom this Mother’s Day. We are very close and though a specific date on the calendar doesn’t make it any more important for us to spend time together, I’d still love to see her this weekend. I have so much admiration and respect for my mom. As I’ve told you before, my parents immigrated to America before I was born and I watched them work very hard their whole lives.

My mom became a teacher when I started Kindergarten. I remember feeling resentful when she began working. I specifically recall feeling rejected and telling her she changed. It’s so interesting how a young mind processes things. Now, as an adult, I respect how difficult it was for her to go to work every day, attend school at night, grade student papers/tests and then study for her own academic work. She taught AP French and ended up earning masters degrees in and teaching Spanish, Latin and ESL in addition to French. What a rock star!

My mom was still able to get dinner on the table every night. Based on her busy schedule, meals were not an event at our house. We ate lots of chicken cutlets, rice-a-roni and some frozen dinners in-between. We were happy. Looking back, it’s a wonder she was able to pull it all off! About once a month, my mom plucked an old Italian cookbook off of the shelf and she, my sister and I would make a homemade pizza recipe inside. We made the dough and sauce, grated the cheese together and assembled and baked the pie on a sheet tray. It’s one of my favorite memories.

Vitamix recently asked me to share a heritage recipe and host a giveaway for their S-Series blender on my site. Specifically, they asked me to talk about a recipe passed down through generations that moms could make with their children. The first thing that came to mind was pizza. Even though my mom, 2 of my sons and I now all have celiac disease, I knew I had to create some version of the same to share with you for Mother’s Day.

In addition to a great recipe, you are also getting a chance to win a personal blender from one of my very favorite brands, Vitamix! When I was in culinary school, one of the chefs said he was asked to be the spokesperson for a different blender company, who shall remain nameless. When he refused, they asked why and he said “because I could put your machine in my Vitamix and it would pulverize it.” Enough said. Vitamix machines are commercial quality. They have no equal on the market and whether you are blending lobster shells for seafood stock (which no other machine can do) or blending a healthy juice or soup (which no other machine will do so well), Vitamix blenders are the best.

Good luck! I hope you win one! Click on this link to enter through 5/12 at midnight: a Rafflecopter giveaway. {This giveaway is now closed}

Back to the pizza. I used the focaccia dough recipe here for the crust. Instead of baking it all the way through, I went about 15 minutes before adding the homemade sauce in the recipe below. I made half plain and topped the other half with spicy sausage. Feel free to use any crust you like, homemade, store bought, gluten-free or not. Just be sure to let your kids participate and at the very least, spread the sauce and cheese on top. Happy Mother’s Day!

Heat butter in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add onion, season with salt and pepper and toss frequently, until softened and beginning to brown at edges, about 5-7 minutes. Add garlic and stir until fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Crush tomatoes with your hands into the pan an add juice from the can along with remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmering, until thickened and deep red in color, about 45 minutes. Cool and then add to Vitamix S-series or other blender. Process at high speed until smooth. Season to taste with additional salt and pepper, if needed.

Heat oven to 375 and bake dough in a sheet pan until almost cooked through, about 15 minutes. Top with sauce, cheese, additional torn basil leaves and any other toppings and bake 10-15 minutes more, until dough is cooked through and cheese is melted. Set oven to broil and cook an additional 2-3 minutes until cheese is bubbling and beginning to brown. Remove from oven, cool 5 minutes. slice and serve.

My mom used to make hundreds of yeast doughnuts when I was growing up. My friends loved coming over on doughnut days! She would freeze them and we would thaw them as an after school snack. I would love to find an amazing gluten free deep fried yeast doughnut, but it’s probably better that I don’t…

I can totally relate to having immigrant parents who worked hard to provide for the family. My parents, mom especially, worked around the clock to make sure that my sister, brother and myself were provided for. While we never wanted for anything, the trade off was that we were latchkey kids for a good portion of our preteen lives.

Through all the work though, I remember my mom getting dinner on the table. How she managed to do this, while working as a nurse and helping my dad with his business is mind boggling to me. She was never a baker (older generation Korean’s don’t bake like North Americans) so the kitchen memories I have are ones where I helped her make banchan, side dishes eaten with rice, and other Korean dishes. She always let me taste test everything and I usually got chased out of the kitchen when I’d asked for sixth and sevenths though.

When I was growing up there were always chocolate chip cookies being baked in our kitchen. The item that I am trying to make as my legacy is homemade pizza. I’ve been doing it for more than half my life, started working at a local joint when I was 16. My two young boys are starting to learn just as of the beginning of the year. Making pizza is totally fun and very rewarding…You get to eat your creations! I am always looking for new and inventive pizza combinations, haven’t done a pepperoni pizza for myself in years. One of my recent adventures was the La Montanara, the crust is fried, topped and then baked…It is most excellent!

My favorite cooking/food memory is, when my great grandma taught me how to cook. There were so many new and amazing things I learned in her giant 1950’s pink kitchen. Fried yellow summer squash was one of my favorites, and how no one left the table without having to adjust buttons and belts.

One of my favorite recipes passed from my Mom to me is her “Hermit Bar” recipe. They are something like oatmeal cookies, but denser, with nuts and dried fruit. There is so much stuff in these bars, they could be the mainstay of a hermit’s diet!

It’s always great cooking with family and having fun experiences. One of the most fun experience that I had was with my little cousins. We were making a German Chocolate Cake from scratch. There were so many steps and things to do, but we laughed so much! Although we dropped one of the two layers on the floor–tragic!!–we will never forget the fun that we had :o)

My favorite memory is my grandmother teaching me how to make her homemade cinnamon bread! It took all day and we went through it step by step. And we wrote out the recipe card together. I am so glad that I have that recipe and that memory of making the bread with her.

What a sweet memory of your mom.
Growing up it was just my mom and I and we loved experimenting in the kitchen together. She gave me a love of cooking and I thank her for that. My favorite recipe from her is German Dumplings with Goulash, it always made me feel like “home” so whenever I went away and came back or if I go to visit her….she’s in Australia now….she makes my favorite and I feel like I never left.

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I have always loved food. Loved to cook. Loved to talk about food, think about food, read about food. You get the gist. Food + Me = Love! Recently, my relationship with food was challenged. My love turned to fear.Read My Story